Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

Over the last fifty years, rich finds of gold objects have been uncovered in China’s northeastern Liaoning province. These tombs belonged to a tribe of steppe nomads called the Murong Xianbei who settled north of the Great Wall during the Han dynasty and established a succession of short-lived states called Yan that ruled parts of Northeast Asia during the third to fifth centuries CE. Until now, the history of the Murong and the rapidly emerging field of Murong archaeology have been published almost exclusively in Chinese. This dissertation seeks to rectify the lack of Western scholarship about this unique ...

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

This dissertation examines a number of aspects of the history of the Venetian villa. In particular, it documents Andrea Navagero's influence on the nature of villeggiatura in the sixteenth-century Veneto. Although the initial impetus for this study was the evaluation of Navagero's descriptions of Islamic Spanish gardens and their influence on the Renaissance garden, aspects of his work, letters, and villas have forced a further reevaluation of Venetian villa life and its sources. Among the more significant results of my research on their impact are: a recasting of the early modern Venetian approach to the past, a recognition ...